


Heart, Mind, Soul

by khiori



Series: Daemon Light [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character studies, Daemons, F/M, Gen, ILY, Multi, Soul Bond, because daemons make everything cooler, kinda fluffy in places, please, stop reading these and read the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:35:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khiori/pseuds/khiori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma had heard that it was a lot harder to hide your feelings when your soul was beside you, making you vulnerable. She wasn't sure about the rest of the world, but Ripkin made her strong.<br/>A collection of drabbles and one-shots, some lead on from each other.<br/>Once Upon A Time with daemons from His Dark Materials.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The blacksmith's magpie daemon shrieks loudly when they tie him up, scratching at Ripkin's eyes with her claws. "Cyrilla," he calls her quietly, and she stills, coming to a rest on a root by his feet.

"Who are you?" Emma demands.

He smiles, a bright smile that cuts like a blade. "Killian Jones. Most people have taken to calling me by my more colourful moniker, though; Hook."

Ripkin's tufted ears prick, so she doesn't bother even trying to hide her surprise. "As in Captain Hook?"

Cyrilla's feathers ruffle, pleased. "So you've heard of me," Hook grins.

Mary Margaret pulls a shining, wickedly-sharp steel hook from the satchel and holds it up, her lips parted. Cyrilla screams and flies forwards, grasping the hook and pulling it from Mary Margaret's hands. She lands back next to Hook, one clawed foot tight around the hook on the floor. "Let us go," she demands in a lyrical voice, glaring between Ripkin and Mary Margaret's Ozymandias.

"Shut up, liar," Ripkin cuts her off helpfully.

Emma spares the lynx an annoyed glance, and whistles loudly enough that he winces. "There," she sighs. "You can answer us or the ogres."

"Not a chance, love," he smiles.

With a shrug, the small party turns to leave him. Ripkin hesitates until he is pulled after Emma. She hasn't time to wonder why before Hook is calling her back. "Alright! You've bested me. I can count the number of people who've done that on one hand."

Emma listens as he gives his explanations, studying him carefully. When he pauses, she turns to Ripkin. "Is he lying?" Ripkin shakes his head, intent on the little magpie daemon beside the bound man. He's never failed her before, so she unties Hook without complaint.

"You won't regret this," he promises her.

"If you betray us, you will," she returns. They hurry away from the sound of approaching ogres, Hook already making lurid remarks and heavy comments about how he wouldn't mind being tied up again in different circumstances. Normally, the comments wouldn't even register, but for the fact that the whole time they walk, Cyrilla perches delicately between Ripkin's mottled shoulders, and he doesn't say a word.

* * *

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

"I can't go," Snow says regretfully, glancing at Ozymandias by her side. He buts her gently with his antlers in apology.

Aurora looks nervously to her dove daemon. "It should be me, then. I have the least to lose."

"I promised to protect you--" Mulan breaks in.

Emma sighs. "I'm going. It's my son. Ripkin can climb perfectly well."

Hook strides forwards with a grin, placing her hand on his shoulder. "I was hoping it'd be you, love," he leers.

She rolls her eyes, refusing to reply. Undaunted, Hook holds up the brace around his stump, gesturing to it happily.

"Not a chance," Emma snaps. The pirate might be charming and on his best behaviour so far, but she isn't stupid, and she's fairly certain he could kill her if he wanted.

He raises a dark eyebrow. "I can't exactly climb one-handed, can I?"

Reluctantly, she hands him the hook. He clicks it into place and Cyrilla immediately leaves his shoulder to perch on the hook.

"I'm not taking my eyes off you for a second." Emma warns them.

"We would despair if you did," he retorts.

It's going to be a long climb.

* * *

 

"You know, most men would take your silence as off-putting, but me, I love a challenge." Hook grins from his spot a few feet further down the stalk.

Emma doesn't reply. She's intent on Ripkin, watching his steady progress up the vine.

"I don't need you to talk," Hook continues. "You're something of an open book."

"Is that right?" she can't help replying.

Hook beams. "Aye. You're so determined to get back to your lad because you don't want him to be abandoned the way you were."

Cyrilla hops from his shoulder into the air and flies around their heads. The wind steals her lyrical voice, but Emma is sure she can hear some kind of sea shanty with interesting rhymes for 'block'.

"That's not intuition," Emma tells Hook, "That's eavesdropping."

Cyrilla laughs, landing so close to Emma she flinches away. "I like you, Swan," the daemon says.

A scream tears Emma's attention away from Hook's daemon. Ripkin is slipping from the stalk, his paws flailing against the air. "Emma!" He screams.

"Ripkin! Hold on, I'm--" he falls before the words have left her throat.

She gasps at the sharp tug in her gut, their bond pulled tight. She can feel her heart thrumming against her ribs. "Ripkin!"

Something inside her bends, stretches. She waits for the inevitable snap, but instead there is the feeling of being immersed in hot water. Heat rushes over her skin, raising a bright red flush. It's not unpleasant, it's--intimate.

Hook's steel namesake is embedded in the beanstalk. He's bent backwards, his hand closed around Ripkin's scruff.

The lynx daemon dangles limp in his grasp, stunned by the feel of another human's hands on him.

Emma watches, breathless, as the muscles in Hook's arm flex and he rights himself, setting Ripkin down beside Emma on a thick, stable branch of the beanstalk.

"Why did you do that?" Emma demands. She's hyperventilating, holding Ripkin hard against her. "You grabbed-- you touched--"

"I'm sorry, Princess," Hook scoffs. "Should I have simply let him fall? What would that have done to you, I wonder?"

"I--" she breaks off then, burying her face in Ripkin's soft fur. Perhaps what shocks her the most is that Hook's rough hands in Ripkin's fur hadn't felt like a violation at all.

* * *

 

 

The shackle closes around Hook's wrist with a click. "What--? Swan!" he gasps, reaching for her.

"I'm sorry. I can't take the chance that I'm wrong about you." She says, shaking her head.

Ripkin stares at her, aghast. "Emma! They helped us," he protests.

"And if we are wrong about them? If they hurt Henry and Phoena?" Ripkin says nothing more, but he growls quietly at her.

"I've risked my life--my safety--to help you," Hook snarls. "And this is how you repay me? Leave us to die?"

"You're not going to die," Emma protests. She can't look at Cyrilla, the angle of her beautiful, sapphire-emerald wings speaks too much of betrayal.

She turns around before she can change her mind, striding away towards the hole in the wall Anton left for her.

"Swan!" She hears Hook yell furiously, his voice mingling with Cyrilla angrily cursing Ripkin.

"Why are you doing this?" Ripkin asks her quietly, accusingly. "I can't be wrong about him. About them." she tells him. She can still feel Hook's fingers in Ripkin's fur.


	3. Chapter 3

Emma pulls up outside the mayor's house and gets out, holding the kid--Henry's--door open for him.

He climbs out reluctantly, his bag slung across one shoulder. Halfway up the path, the door bursts open and a woman rushes out. At a guess, Emma would put her at not quite ten years older than her. Her hair is immaculate, her makeup flawless. A dark panther daemon pads beside her on silent feet.

"Henry!" she cries, reaching forwards and drawing him into a tight hug. "Where have you been?" she demands.

Henry jerks away from her angrily. "I found my real mom," he snaps, charging inside the house and slamming the door.

The mayor's shoulders slump. Her daemon looks from the quivering door to where Ripkin sits on the path, delicately washing his paws.

* * *

 

They are silent for a while, until Emma notices Henry's gaze is drawn over and over to where Ripkin dozes beside her.

His own daemon is being a gull, perched on the pole beside him. "His name is Ripkin," Emma tells her son. It feels odd to think of him like that.

Henry's daemon becomes a hare and leaps down, approaching Ripkin with all of the subtlety Henry lacks.

She has bright, intelligent eyes in either form, and she changes as smoothly as Ripkin used to.

Henry bites his lip. "This is Phoena."

Ripkin's ears flick angrily. Emma knows he has never forgiven her for giving away Henry and his as daemon. It's only now, watching the lithe hare tentatively press her nose against Ripkin's side that she realises he had to give up just as much, without having any choice in the matter.

His olive eyes blink open and he stares between Henry and Phoena. "It's nice to meet you," he mutters. And, then, softly, his eyes fixed on Phoena, he murmurs, "I named you Kaiya."


	4. Chapter 4

Emma watches, horrified, as her companions lose their minds. Snow and Regina are screaming at each other, magic crackling around Regina's hands.

Behind her, David and Hook are fighting in earnest. The storm rages so loudly it almost drowns out the sound of their swords, whipping the Jolly Roger's sails against the three great masts. The ship rolls and tips on the water and the deck is slick with spray.

Hook and David circle each other, exchanging blows so fast their swords blur. David is stronger, and his sword is longer than Hook's cutlass, but the pirate is faster and he fights dirty, using his hook in tandem to his sword to catch and deflect David's blows.

David's Daniya snarls and swipes at Cyrilla, trying to catch the magpie daemon in her jaws. She flies just above the wolf daemon, diving in to rake at Daniya with her claws.

"Stop it! You're going to kill each other," Emma yells at them.

Hook suddenly drops his sword and falls to the deck, clutching his side and gasping. Daniya has Cyrilla in her teeth, shaking her back and forth.

David's eyes are clouded and unseeing. He makes no move to check Daniya, though Hook and Cyrilla are screaming.

"It's us!" Emma realises. "We're causing the storm, guys, stop!"

They can't hear her, or they won't. "Fine," she mutters. "If you won't listen, watch."

She rushes to the side of the ship and climbs up onto the railing. Below her, the sea is black. "Emma, please don't tell me this is your idea," Ripkin says.

"It'll be fine," she reassures him. "We'll just tread water for a few minutes."

"I can't swim," he cries.

Gathering up her daemon in her arms, she turns back to her companions on the ship. "Hey!"

She jumps before they can call her back. The water is icy and cuts through her like blades. Her lungs feel tight and small and she gasps at the surface, desperate for air. Ripkin splashes beside her, soaking wet and furious.

There's a brief flash of intense pain at the back of her head, and then nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

Hook snaps into awareness as soon as he feels the teeth of David's daemon close around Cyrilla.

It's agonising, like fiery blades closing around his heart, and all he can think is that it's been nearly three centuries since they last lost a fight. He's almost impressed with the prince, but targeting a man's daemon is low even for him.

He feels the release before he registers Emma disappearing over the side rail. Both Charmings and Regina are crowded around the rail, peering into the water.

Hook sees the panic in David's eyes and a small, vindictive part of him is delighted. The better part of him, the one that's surfacing more and more lately, knows he can't let Emma drown.

David pulls his sword belt off and drops it on the deck, grabbing the rigging above his head and hoisting himself up onto the rail.

"Wait," Hook calls, collecting the long coil if rope stored under the helm for just this reason. "Here, tie this on, mate."

David gives him an unfathomable look as he slips the rope over his shoulder. It's a heavy, weighted look that makes Hook feel as though he is being judged. He turns it right back on the prince, good hand going to where Cyrilla huddles against his neck, battered and sore.

David turns away and dives into the sea, his daemon splashing down beside him.

They duck beneath the surface three times before David surfaces with Emma in his arms. His daemon holds Emma's Ripkin in her jaws. "A lot more gentle than she was with us," Cyrilla hums in his ear. "Hard to believe of Prince Charming, isn't it? He seems the type to be above targeting his opponent's daemon. Fair fight, and all that."

He smirks, reaching to hook the line up to a pulley. "Ha. Hasn't stopped us. Are you alright now?"

"I suppose. I haven't been caught in...how long is it?" she asks thoughtfully.

Hook shrugs. "No idea. You should have been a tiger, 'Rill,"

She doesn't return the jab, simply hops of his shoulder to perch on the helm. David struggles aboard the ship, his arms full of Emma's limp body and his struggling daemon.

Hook feels a tug and turns to see Cyrilla is inching further away from him, closer to Emma's unconscious daemon. He follows reluctantly and watches the Charmings revive their daughter. Their daemons nose worriedly at Ripkin until he wakes and shakes his fur dry, and with a flash of shock, Hook realises he's incredibly glad.


	5. Chapter 5

Ripkin can remember the day he settled perfectly. They were being bullied by an older kid in the home when they were fourteen.

The kid had a big terrier daemon that liked to grab Ripkin and bite him until Emma cried. He'd been small, back then. He was often a mouse or a sparrow when they were children, because that's what Emma had felt like being.

The day he settled is the day Emma snapped. He'd burst from a dormouse into a snarling, spitting eurasian lynx twice the size of the bully's white terrier and scratched the other daemon across the face so viciously the boy hadn't talked for a week.

Afterwards, Emma ran her hands through his thick, spotted fur and traced the dark tips of his ears and his ruff. "Are we going to stay like this, then?" she'd asked him.

He'd nodded, and the fluid feeling inside him that had always been there solidified into something permanent, concrete.

Ripkin tells the story to Cyrilla on their fifth night in Neverland, while Hook and Emma sit on the other side of the camp discussing plans. He likes Cyrilla-more than Emma will let herself like Hook. "How did you settle?" he asks her.

She flicks her long dark tail and it flashes emerald, sapphire, deep royal purple. "We were fifteen, I think. It was the day we joined the navy. Killian's brother Liam was leftenant and first mate on the ship. The captain was a good man, but old; he had a dog daemon, I remember. On the day that we set sail, the captain gathered together all the boys whose daemons had not yet settled. We were some of the eldest there. He told us all to go to the prow and look out at the horizon. The sea seemed to go on forever, endless and powerful. We fell in love instantly. I flew up to get a better look, to see more of this amazing sight, and I knew then that I was done." Cyrilla looks down, her black eyes brighter than Ripkin has ever seen them. "We were always meant for the sea, for exploring."

Ripkin looks at her doubtfully. Cyrilla is clever and quick and she's earned his respect, but he's never before equated  _sea_  with  _magpie_. "A magpie," he says, deadpan, eyeing her delicate wings.

Cyrilla looks at him sharply, then over her shoulder at Hook. There's pain in her eyes, Ripkin sees, raw and open. "We've been to Neverland before," she says softly. "for more than three hundred years. It's a strange place, does strange things to daemons. You can never grow old here, never change-but what was fixed is not."

Before Ripkin's eyes, the small magpie vanishes. In her place stands another bird, massive and strong. He feels the weight of Emma and Hook's eyes on them, hears Emma's strangled, shocked gasp.

Cyrilla spreads wings that are wider than Emma is tall and flexes them. Her beak is large and powerful, her eyes fierce. She beats her massive wings once, swooping over Ripkin's head to land on Hook's shoulder. Her tail is a flash of snowy white beneath chestnut brown wings and body.

"Bloody hell," Hook mutters, shifting his weight. "I'd forgotten how much you used to weigh."

Cyrilla looks between Emma and Ripkin and shrugs her wings. "He wasn't always Captain Hook," she says. "And I wasn't always a magpie."

* * *

Emma is so shocked she can't speak for nearly a minute. Instinctively, her eyes go to Ripkin, checking that he is still a lynx, still the Ripkin she knows and loves.

Hook's Cyrilla perches silently on his shoulder, gripping his leather coat with large talons. Her wingspan must be two, two and a half metres, Emma thinks. Her feathers are rich, beautiful golden-brown darkening to chestnut on her wings and snowy white on her tail. Emma's never seen a bird that big, that-noble.

Cyrilla's magpie shape has always seemed such a perfect fit for his personality: clever and quick, selfish, ruthless, a survivor, completely obsessed with shiny things.

But the way he'd offered his services to find Henry, the quiet determination and belief he has in her, the simple surety and confidence he has in his ship and his love for the sea-they don't fit that profile.

"I'm sorry," she finally says.

Hook frowns, running a finger through the feathers on Cyrilla's breast. "What for?"

"Because I've thought of you as just a magpie for a long time," she says, "and it seems that you're a lot more than that."

He smiles. "I did this to myself, you know. To get revenge for my Milah, to destroy the crocodile, I became less than I was. Hook . . . Hook is me, but without any mercy, any kindness. Just obsessed with revenge. It's not a good thing to live for, Emma."

"I think I prefer you this way. You and your-what is she now?" Emma breaks off.

Hook shrugs Cyrilla off his shoulder and she lands beside him on the ground, nipping at his hook in annoyance. "Bloody heavy," he mutters. "A white tailed sea eagle-they were quite common in the enchanted forest, around the coast line."

Ripkin pads closer cautiously. "So you changed when you first came to Neverland because your personality had?"

Hook looks at Emma before he answers; it's rare to talk to a daemon not your own. "Aye, though any daemon can change at will here. They settle once more after you leave Neverland's waters."

Emma feels Ripkin concentrating hard, feels something concrete inside her go fluid and uncertain. He gasps and flashes into a cheetah. Their sides heave with exhaustion, sweat beading on Emma's brow. "We're out of practise," Ripkin smiles. He flickers back and forth between some of his old favourites, first a field mouse, then a coyote, a finch, an otter. He comes back to his lynx shape the most often; they're both comfortable like that.

Cyrilla seems pretty firmly fixed as an eagle, preening her feathers happily. Perhaps, Emma thinks, it hadn't been her choice to settle as a magpie when she and Hook left Neverland for the first time. She can't imagine her personality ever changing so much that Ripkin would be forced to settle as something else; but then she's never seen her love killed in front of her. She looks at Hook and Cyrilla talking quietly to each other, and for a second. she hates Gold.

They sit in silence, Hook glancing at Emma every few minutes. Emma and Ripkin doze side by side, Ripkin still scrolling absently through various different forms.

She's asleep when Snow and David come back from their foraging trip, laden with the berries Hook instructed them to gather, Regina a step behind them. The three royals take in their daughter sleeping quietly, Hook keeping watch a few metres away. They relax for a second, before Snow drops everything on the ground in shock.

"Charming," she gasps, grabbing her husband's arm and pointing to where Ripkin sleeps, curled around Emma's feet. He's being a coyote with rain-grey fur and a bushy tail.

Charming's mouth drops open and his wolf daemon whines uneasily.

Hook laughs then, because their expressions are just too good, and Cyrilla glides smoothly down from a low branch above his head. When she lands, she is a snow leopard. "Did we forget to tell you?" she purrs. "Daemons don't settle in Neverland."


	6. Chapter 6

The first time Emma sees Mary Margaret touch David's Daniya, she nearly chokes in shock. It's frighteningly casual, the way her fingers catch in Daniya's snowy ruff, trace the silky triangle of the wolf daemon's ear. In response, David thumbs Ozymandias' velveted antlers and presses a kiss to the stag's russet brow as he leaves for work.

Ripkin presses his mottled side close to her shin and springs up onto her lap. His fur is soft and familiar in her hands-- _only_ her hands. The thought of someone else touching him, holding him, her Ripkin, her  _soul_ , makes her shake with nausea. 

Snow smiles sympathetically. "It unnerves you, doesn't it?" 

She swallows thickly. "You--David--how can you  _touch--_ how can--she isn't yours, she isn't  _you._ " 

Ozymandias moves slowly towards them; his hooves are loud on the wooden floor. "We love them completely. I love David as much as I love Snow....how could I not love his touch?" 

And now that she thinks about it, she has seen them touch before and not even registered the intimacy, Snow and Charming make it feel so normal. Emma recalls the husband and wife passing on the street and Daniya pushing her nose into Mary Margaret's hand in greeting; recalls David brushing his hand along the stag daemon's flank to calm his wife in confrontations with Regina.

"I guess that's true love, huh?" she says finally. 

There's a mother's wisdom in Mary Margaret's eyes. "You'll find out one day."


	7. Chapter 7

Belle's Kairan settles as a snowy owl the day before her seventeenth birthday. It's considered fairly late by average standards, but they've always walked to the beat of their own drum. He flies beside her on silent wings through her library at night, searching out books with his amber eyes. 

It's a skill they use when they first move to the Dark One's castle and discover the vast library he keeps. Kairan flies up to the highest shelves and takes small volumes carefully in his talons. In one book, they find a biography of their master.

There's a sketch of the Dark One with smooth, unmarked human skin and a small dormouse daemon tucked into his collar. On the overleaf, the cruel, reptilian man she knows stares up at her, and the daemon coiled around his forearm is the deadly blue krait she knows. 

She drops the book in shock, revulsion, eyes flicking to Kairan. Behind her daemon, Rumplestiltskin appears in a cloud of red smoke. He notices the book on the floor immediately. 

"Catching up on my history, dearie?" 

She stammers and eventually goes silent. 

The Dark One laughs and caresses Immitis' slender, scaled head. "She's a fitting daemon for the Dark One now, isn't she? Don't worry, dearie, the pirate didn't escape either."

He vanishes never explains his comment, though it's neither the first nor last time he mentions the pirate, an old nemesis never explained. 

* * *

 

The best part of thirty years in an asylum later, Belle and Kairan finally meet the pirate. 

Later, she reads up on him (books have never failed her) and cannot stop imagining two different battles unfolding. In the first, a sea eagle easily pins a terrified dormouse. In the second, a deadly snake winds her way around an injured magpie.

They changed each other, she decides, and each for the worse.


	8. Chapter 8

Emma has never been more glad to leave a place than Neverland.

  
The Jolly Roger hits the water a few hundred metres from Storybrooke's harbour. The terrific impact sends Emma sprawling painfully across the polished deck, and a wave of icy Atlantic water over the bow.

  
Ripkin stands with an irritated hiss and shakes out his fur. He is still a lynx, to Emma's relief. She's not sure how she'd handle her soul changing so drastically. But now she looks--he _is_ different. His fur is longer, and there's more tawny mingled in with the brown and tan. He looks a little bigger, a little fuller.

  
"It looks like we've really come into ourselves," he remarks, and rasps his barbed tongue along her cheek. Smiling, she gathers him in her arms and stands.

  
She nearly drops him in surprise. 

Daniya is sat calmly beside David, as she always is, but she has become stockier, regal; her short dusky fur has turned a brilliant mist-white. Snow and Charming stare at the wolf daemon until Ozymandias trots over to nose at Daniya's flank.

  
"You've all changed," Emma whispers. Ozymandias' antlers have an extra tine; Regina's panther daemon blinks through jade eyes rather than his usual violet.

  
Ripkin flicks a tufted ear thoughtfully. "Is it really that strange? Are you honestly the same person you were when I settled? David was a shepherd when Daniya settled; now he's a king. And we're still _us,_ Emma. Just a bit more."

  
She nods, rubbing his neck thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess." She finally concedes.

  
"Everything alright, Swan?"

  
Emma turns to face the helm and catch Hook's eye. She looks for the beautiful little magpie in her usual place, perched on his steel hook, but she isn't there.

  
"Up there," Ripkin murmurs, his olive eyes fixed on the railing three feet to the left of the captain. Cyrilla's eagle talons are curled tightly in the wood. Her feathers are lighter than Emma remembers, her beak a little shorter. The sea throws the sun's light back up at the eagle daemon, teasing the red-gold from her dark wings.  She preens under Emma's gaze, and flits to Hook's shoulder. He sets the helm and walks down to join them on the main deck.

  
"He looks a little different, Swan," Hook comments with a grin.

  
Emma returns his smile cautiously. "A white tailed sea eagle," she says. "She suits you, Killian."


	9. Chapter 9

Henry starts crying ten miles outside of Storybrooke. He squirms in his car seat and goes red in the face, shrieking at the top of his voice.  His daemon flickers between shapes too fast for Regina to count, matching his wailing with her own cries.

  
Regina bites her lip. Her new son is inconsolable and they've not even reached the town border. She didn't think she'd fail as a mother quite this soon.

  
At the next layby, she pulls off the road and climbs out of the SUV, taking Henry in her arms and rocking him gently. "Shhhh, little prince, Henry, shhh. You're okay," she tells him desperately.

  
He cries louder, thrashing back and forth in her arms. In his car seat, his daemon turns into a tiny wildcat--or is she a lynx?--and yowls.

  
Cosimo, a hulking black shadow, flows forward from the back seat. He takes Henry's daemon in his powerful jaws and jumps to land at Regina's feet. Without a word, the panther daemon curls around Henry's soul and gently licks her. His tongue is longer than her tiny body.

  
Amazed, Regina watches Henry quiet and still in her arms. With a final hiccup, he goes silent and stares up at her.

  
"Hi," she whispers to him breathlessly. Henry gurgles and blinks slowly. Cosimo is still gently grooming the infant daemon. She has shifted into a panther cub beneath his touch.

  
"Don't panic, Regina," he purrs. "We can do this."

  
She nods determinedly. "Yes. We can. How did you know what to do?"

  
"We both did," he allows. "It's instinct. We'll pick it up."

  
He gazes thoughtfully at his mimic. "I like the name Phoena for her. Don't you think?"

  
A smile breaks across Regina's face. "Phoena. Henry and Phoena. Cosimo and Phoena. Yes, I do."

  
She buckles Henry back into his car seat and places it on the front seat. Cosimo curls himself into the foot well. It's a tight squeeze for him, but one that allows him to rest his ebony head on the seat beside Henry's carrier.

  
The last ten miles to Storybrooke are spent in a comfortable silence. When Regina glances across at her new son, she sees Phoena in the shape of a beagle puppy; her body is curled up beside Henry's, both fast asleep, but her head rests on the tip of Cosimo's nose.


	10. Chapter 10

Puzzled by a caller so early, Emma is already suspicious when she opens the door. The man on the other side is dressed in black from head to toe, complete with a calf-length leather coat, She has to admit he's good looking, especially with dark kohl lining his deep blue eyes. 

She's tempted to tell him that the pirate convention is next door, but he looks at her like he _knows_ her. There's also his daemon; most people in New York have small daemons. Insects, song birds, cats, dogs, the odd monkey. This guy has an eagle daemon of some kind perched on his shoulder. The leather there is worn and marked by the fearsome points of her talons. Emma's not sure of species, but she's absolutely massive. She's also staring at Ripkin.

"Swan," the guy breathes. He says her name intimately, disbelievingly. 

"Do I know you?" She asks.

His eyes dull. "I'm--an old friend. You don't remember me, but I can make you."

He steps forwards, into her personal space. Before she can kick where he'll remember it, his daemon takes a beakful of his dark hair and yanks, hard. He reels backwards and shrugs his daemon angrily off his shoulder. She glides to the ground on her opened wings and lands in front of Ripkin. 

"I'm Cyrilla," she says softly. "I'm sorry for our rudeness. But we've missed you."

And then, to Emma's complete astonishment, Ripkin pads forwards, his short tail quivering with nervous energy, and buries his head in the smooth feathers on Cyrilla's neck.

* * *

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Sometimes, Killian misses Liam's daemon more than he misses Liam himself. Celandia had been settled for years by the time Killian joined the navy--Liam was six years older, and, it seemed then, infinitely wiser. On cold, bitter nights, missing Milah and Liam and himself, the way he used to be, Hook sometimes shouted to the dark sea that Liam couldn't have been that wise--he'd trusted a king, and now he was dead--but on those occasions, Cyrilla would peck him sharply and remind him that it Celandia who had groomed her, Celandia who taught her how to fly before they both settled. 

So when Emma asks him, once, three weeks after their triumphant return from Neverland, what Liam was like, he tells her about Celandia first. 

"His daemon was called Celandia," he recalls. "She was a bull mastiff." 

Emma gives a non-committal smile and gestures to Cyrilla. "That sounds awkward, on a ship."

"You'd be surprised, actually. She might not have been very good at getting into the rigging, but she was very good at keeping the rest of us in line. They were a very good match, Swan." He tells her. 

"Where you there?" She asks suddenly. "When he--"

"I held him in my arms." 

"I'm sorry." 

He hums in acknowledgment and holds out his forearm; Cyrilla lands and digs her talons into the protective leather, ruffling her feathers and nipping at his hook. "I think we knew," Hook says quietly, his fingers running softly through Cyrilla's feathers. "Even when Pan had given him the antidote, Celandia was--off. She was distant, and she wouldn't speak, wouldn't look at anyone. I told myself she was simply shocked, but then, when we began to sail from Neverland, she started shedding." 

"Ripkin sheds all the time," Emma says, dusting a few stray, tawny hairs from her jeans to demonstrate. 

Hook shakes his head. "Not fur...dust. It was as though she was fading, slowly, blurring around the edges. She'd always been so certain; she wouldn't change when we were in Neverland, even when me and 'Rill were trying out every shape we could."

Emma shudders and buries a hand in Ripkin's scruff. "That's...horrible. I really am sorry."

He shakes his head as if he's coming up from underwater, and smiles softly. "It was three hundred years ago, Swan."

She says nothing; Henry was taken recently enough that she knows three hundred years would do absolutely nothing to reduce the pain if he'd been lost. 


	12. Chapter 12

She stumbles through the small hole in the ice, joints too stiff and weak to move more than a few inches. As soon as she's within reach, David and Hook are there, hauling her the last few feet into their warm arms. She sags, boneless, against Hook, pressing her face into the heat of his neck, her hands tight around his shoulders.

There's a hollow feeling inside her and then a tugging sensation. "Ripkin," she gasps. 

The daemon is still on the other side of the ice wall, two weak to make a noise. Cyrilla gives a frantic cry and swoops through the hole, taking his scruff in her beak and tugging to rouse him. Eventually, with much cajoling from the eagle daemon, Ripkin wobbles through into the open space. Even before Emma can take him in her arms, Daniya pounces upon him, tucking him against her and licking furiously at her pelt. Emma gives the ghost of a smile; David's Daniya has always been overly maternal to Ripkin, and never more than when they're in danger. 

"Let's get you home," David instructs. 

Before she can attempt to walk, Hook swings her up into his arms. Too tired to fight him, she simply presses her face against the soft velvet of his vest, drawing his heavy coat around her. Cyrilla glides beside him on silent wings, her feathers stirred by the night breeze.  Daniya brings up the rear of their small group, padding along determinedly holding Ripkin by the scruff of his neck. 

* * *

 

As soon as David opens the door to the loft, Henry leaps up from the kitchen table. He takes one look at her cradled in the pirate's arms and his mouth falls open in shock. "Mom," he gasps. "Are you okay?"

"N-never better, kid," she replies. 

Ripkin snorts. "That's a lie," he says tremulously, pressing closer to Daniya's snowy fur. 

Hook sets her down in a chair and he and David rush for blankets, sharing their own heat as much as they can. A second before the lights click on, Phoena trots over to the other daemons and flickers into the shape of a hulking grizzly bear, pulling Ripkin into a tight hug. The lynx snuggles further into her thick fur. "Thanks, kid," he purrs.

Emma smiles, leaning her head against Hook's. Cyrilla perches on Hook's shoulder, her wing warm and fragile yet incredibly strong against Emma's cheek. "This is good," she says. 


End file.
